Land-cover change and urban heat in a warming climate: a global satellite perspective.
- 1Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.
- 2Department of Geoinformation and Environmental Technologies, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Villach 9524, Austria.
- 3UNM Center for the Advancement of Spatial Informatics Research and Education (ASPIRE), University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA.
Abstract
The Urban Heat Island effect intensifies urban temperatures and exacerbates climate-related warming, yet how land cover (LC) buffers or amplifies this warming remains poorly quantified. This study analyzed satellite-derived land surface temperature (LST) across 100 cities from 2000 to 2020 using summer Landsat imagery at five-year intervals, evaluating LC-LST relationships through a three-level framework: net compositional change, pixel-level transition-specific pathways, and a Relative Temperature Index (RTI) revealing cross-city thermal signatures. LC change does not simply raise average temperatures - it preferentially amplifies the most dangerous heat. Extreme-heat metrics responded 1.5-1.7× more strongly than mean ΔLST to the same transitions. Water loss showed the strongest association with ΔLST increases (+ 3.7-4.9 K regardless of destination class), while impervious expansion was the most consistent predictor (+ 2.9-4.2 K across source classes) and the strongest significant predictor of net city-scale warming (R² ≈ 0.23), alongside a significant cooling association with cropland gain. Mean LST across LC classes rose 1.3-2.6× faster than global mean land-only temperature over the study period, and extreme-heat metrics rose 2.9-4.5× faster, indicating urban surfaces amplify background climate warming beyond LC conversion alone. RTI analysis confirmed consistent relative thermal ordering across cities: impervious covers were consistently warmer than city means (RTI = 1.011), water cooler (RTI = 0.988), and vegetation near-neutral (RTI = 1.000). These results - consistent across three analytical levels, underscoring the value of this hierarchical framework - show that mitigation strategies should prioritize protecting water bodies and limiting impervious expansion, evaluated against extreme-heat metrics rather than mean temperature alone.
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BibTeX
@article{sarafi2026landcover,
title = {{Land-cover change and urban heat in a warming climate: a global satellite perspective.}},
author = {Saghi Sarafi and Christopher D Lippitt and Gernot Paulus},
journal = {Theoretical and applied climatology},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1007/s00704-026-06604-1},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42910308},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Land-cover change and urban heat in a warming climate: a global satellite perspective.
AU - Saghi Sarafi
AU - Christopher D Lippitt
AU - Gernot Paulus
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/10
JO - Theoretical and applied climatology
DO - 10.1007/s00704-026-06604-1
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42910308
AB - The Urban Heat Island effect intensifies urban temperatures and exacerbates climate-related warming, yet how land cover (LC) buffers or amplifies this warming remains poorly quantified. This study analyzed satellite-derived land surface temperature (LST) across 100 cities from 2000 to 2020 using summer Landsat imagery at five-year intervals, evaluating LC-LST relationships through a three-level framework: net compositional change, pixel-level transition-specific pathways, and a Relative Temperature Index (RTI) revealing cross-city thermal signatures. LC change does not simply raise average temperatures - it preferentially amplifies the most dangerous heat. Extreme-heat metrics responded 1.5-1.7× more strongly than mean ΔLST to the same transitions. Water loss showed the strongest association with ΔLST increases (+ 3.7-4.9 K regardless of destination class), while impervious expansion was the most consistent predictor (+ 2.9-4.2 K across source classes) and the strongest significant predictor of net city-scale warming (R² ≈ 0.23), alongside a significant cooling association with cropland gain. Mean LST across LC classes rose 1.3-2.6× faster than global mean land-only temperature over the study period, and extreme-heat metrics rose 2.9-4.5× faster, indicating urban surfaces amplify background climate warming beyond LC conversion alone. RTI analysis confirmed consistent relative thermal ordering across cities: impervious covers were consistently warmer than city means (RTI = 1.011), water cooler (RTI = 0.988), and vegetation near-neutral (RTI = 1.000). These results - consistent across three analytical levels, underscoring the value of this hierarchical framework - show that mitigation strategies should prioritize protecting water bodies and limiting impervious expansion, evaluated against extreme-heat metrics rather than mean temperature alone.
SN - 0177-798X
SN - 1434-4483
ER -